> an entire plane of people yakking on the phone

What old world do you live in? Everybody text messages now (or uses Snapchat or Whatsapp or whatever), very few people ever "talk" on a phone. Watch what happens today as the plane lands and the announcement goes out that it is ok to use phones. Of 100 people, maybe 50 quietly text their friends to come pick them up at baggage claim, and one old guy makes a fast, quiet actual call saying in an embarrassed tone "Yeah, it's me, I just landed." Then he hangs up.

> dimensions of space aren't listed

Always available now at http://www.seatguru.com/

But personally (as a tall wide guy) I think a few "size bumps" for extra fees would be very welcome. For example, an extra $10 for an extra inch of legroom, and another $10 for an additional inch of width. The fact is space is money, and small children and petite woman fit JUST FINE in the smallest seats and should get a price break for it.

> Fukushima's error was they didn't raise the sea wall

Also, the backup generators to operate pumps were in the basement that flooded. If the generators had been on the roof, it would have been fine.

I know hindsight is always easy, but it does seem like important stuff in a flood plain should be inspected and thought through once per year by smart people to find glaring problems like this.

Our graphics designer who does a lot of video work got a Mac Pro here at work, they are pretty expensive, but it seems fast and reliable so far. Time will tell for sure.

> you can't put a mechanical drive inside, which limits performance for video editing

I think the designers made the correct decisions for video editing. SSDs are faster than mechanical drives and go inside. Most video editors also need large repositories in addition to their working set (the working set goes on internal SSD) and basically always use external mechanical disk arrays - and the Mac Pro comes with nice fast Thunderbolt for the external arrays.

I dislike the humongous cases of a few years ago, I welcome smaller, more practical, more desk friendly designs just as long as they are every bit as fast.

My toothbrush has charged wirelessly for 15 years. My MacBook Air has a magnetic recharging cable, which is really nice (SOOOO much better than the micro USB on my phone). I previously had a phone that had both magnetic connector charging AND inductive charging in a tiny phone (HP Veer) proving it is possible and practical. I'm utterly baffled by why these two options aren't preferred everywhere. We have existence proofs, everybody that uses them loves them, what is the hold up?

> after the $6,500 max, all expenses are paid

In practice, the insurance companies find ways to increase your out of pocket, or just outright not pay. Let me give my personal example.

I have a medical issue where I will be on a certain drug for the rest of my life. The issue is completely taken care of by this drug, and all medical literature that I can find (and my doctor) says this is the correct treatment. After a year of insurance paying for the drug smoothly, I arrive at the pharmacy and insurance is no longer paying. The insurance company says my "pre approval" has expired and that process takes a week Ok, since I could die without my medication, I pay cash out of pocket. Meanwhile, my doctor calls them for "pre approval", and supposedly it is cleared up. A month goes by, I show up in the pharmacy, the insurance company will only pay for half the dosage. So I pay cash for half, and call my doctor, who says they applied correctly, the insurance company made a mistake, and they will reapply for "pre approval". Boom, I've exceeded my "supposedly" out of pocket max. Welcome to my world of the insurance company refuses to pay by being difficult and sleazy and slow.

So in practice, there is this new part of the system nobody is warning us about. Everybody thinks if the treatment is well understood and your doctor prescribes the treatment then the insurance company MUST PAY, but this is not true. The insurance company can (and regularly does) simply refuse to pay AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH NO WARNING because . Side note: sometimes the reason is there is a cheaper, yet less effective treatment, I ran into that for a DIFFERENT medication once. But my doctor cannot possibly seem to check this in advance? I always find out at the pharmacy at the final moment as I attempt to leave with the drug?

Don't misunderstand me, I do not have a solution for health care, I don't know if single payer would be better or worse, I don't know how to lower costs, and there may not exist a better system than what we have now. But I do know I dislike the current system, it feels antiquated and inefficient. My pharmacy, doctor, and insurance company use FAX to communicate. FAX?! There is no ticketing system where I can keep the pre approval moving along, or where I can double check the final outcome. And it seems clear to me the insurance company is overstepping their bounds. When you get a correct, legitimate prescription, they should pay, but that is not the current system.

You are absolutely correct for DIRECT NON-STOP flights. But many or most international flights have connections and layovers. I live on the west coast, usually I fly to New York or Chicago and catch my connection overseas there - often with a dead laptop battery.

Luckily more and more it is possible to find recharging plugs in airports. But if the TSA weren't being complete jerks, they would provide a completely (USA) standard 110 V power plug on an extension cord right at security. I don't know anybody who flies internationally without their device chargers. But this is the same TSA that refuses to sell you $1 stamped envelopes to put your pocket knife into so you can US mail it to yourself. Or simply "hold" your pocket knife for 48 hours since you will be back in this exact same airport when you return tomorrow. Nope, it is really, REALLY important to run TSA badly and punish innocent people - so they will NOT be providing an electrical plug to allow you to save your $700 phone or $1,500 laptop.

I see the need for a package delivery system (I love internet shopping myself), but I'll bet 99 percent of the USPS deliveries by weight is printed paper. I say shut the USPS down completely and let UPS and FedEx and DHL take up the small slack in package delivery left by the USPS shutdown.

Several people have brought up the cost and barrier to entry of email. Email service is essentially free (gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail) and free WiFi is not that hard to come by. Maybe I'm jaded living in Silicon Valley but all of Mountain View has free WiFi, most libraries and coffee shops provide it, etc. I suppose the main cost is renting $2 worth of computer time at a Kinkos if you are homeless and want to send an email.

But I'm definitely a believer in social safety nets. Currently, I believe there is a tax on every land line phone that goes to supplying "universal lifeline access" to poor people. I would personally vote for a system that as of age 18, every man or woman who was at or below poverty level would be provided a low end SmartPhone for free every 3 years and a basic data plan enough to send and receive email. Coupled with decommissioning 9/10ths of the US post office it probably would save money.

I agree quick communication is the mark of an advanced society, but refusing to upgrade when better options are available is the mark of a doomed society.

When daily physical mail was first invented, it was great. But now that we have cell phones, email, faxes, SMS messages, Slashdot discussions, surely you can see daily physical mail is now SLOWER and less advanced for most messages.

When the first person put a horse shoe on a horse it was an advancement. But when we have cars, subways, trains, etc you have to finally admit horse shoes WERE a good idea, but now you should be using rubber tires on cars.

Any one computer doesn't have to survive longer than a human lifespan if you can transfer files between computers and backup. I have taken many digital pictures in my life, they have been taken with ever increasing quality and the sum total of all pictures has been stored on ever larger and faster laptops. I can afford a new laptop every 2 years, so laptop failures have all been really expected and yet still totally Ok.

> companies which obtained software patents, a direct attack
> on the freedom of programmers everywhere

Obtaining patents is not a direct attack, initiating a lawsuit using patents is the aggression step.

At every large company I worked at (Apple, HP, SGI) they told us to help patent "stuff" as a defensive measure. I don't see anything wrong with accepting we live in an imperfect world where somebody very evil might threaten us and try to shut us down for evil reasons. So you build big tall walls and stock supplies and gunpowder hoping to never use them.

Patent TROLLS are the aggressors, do you blame these companies for planning ahead and preparing to defend themselves from bullies?

Here is a slightly longer list of companies that have sold us (Backblaze) hard drive recently:

B&H Video
CTI-Computech International
Central Computers
Kingstar
NVS Systems
Upgrade Express (might have changed their name?)

We have "farmed" from Costo, Best Buy, and Amazon within the last 6 months. This is where individuals buy "sales item" hard drives. So if you watch for sales, you are are probably getting as good as a price as Backblaze gets.

At Backblaze, we try to pass over the data about once every two weeks. We re-read it from disk, recalculate a SHA1 checksum to make sure there wasn't any bits flipped or lost. It is my (informed) opinion that *ALL* hard drives and *ALL* configurations will have errors you may never detect unless you do this. You can't ever trust any file system.

I think many people assume RAID does this checksumming, as far as I know RAID handles entire drives failing, but it doesn't really have anything to do with a drive that has begun to fail and is starting to flip a few bits here and there but the drive is still mostly responsive.

Personally, I'd really recommend RAID6 with at least 2 parity drives. But always remember, RAID is *NOT* backup. RAID doesn't protect against user stupidity like backup does. RAID does not protect against theft. You don't have to use Backblaze for backups, but for goodness sake USE SOMETHING.